Our Eternal Struggle

Last month, I gave a speech at Temple Judea in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. I described my interaction with the audience HERE. The Jewish Press has just published a part of the actual speech which I would now like to share with my PJM readers.

Who would ever have believed that Jews would be in such danger again? That Israel and Zionism would become such dirty words in the world, despised by western intellectuals and Islamist mobs alike?

Who would ever have predicted that the United Nations would remain ineffective in all things except one: the legitimization of Jew-hatred? And that so many members of international human rights organizations and the mainstream western media would join Muslim leaders to accuse Israel of running an apartheid Nazi state bent on genocide?

Who would ever have thought that the Islamic jihad against Jews, which long preceded the establishment of the state of Israel, would still be going strong – a jihad that began during Muhammad’s reign when he slaughtered the Jewish tribes of Arabia?

Who would ever have suggested that the largest refugee story in the Middle East – 750,000-800,000 Jews expelled from Arab countries – would be forgotten and replaced with a Palestinian-only persecution narrative that would seize the imagination of the world? That Israel, which absorbed its refugees at its own expense, would be demonized and that Palestinian leaders, including terrorists who devote themselves to the destruction of Israel, would be glamorized as righteous and noble victims?

Who would ever have dreamed that Israel would be condemned for trying to defend its civilians? Or that Israel would reap hatred for exercising restraint in its treatment of Palestinian civilians? Or that Israel’s terrorist enemies would be praised for hiding behind their own women and children or would themselves be counted as civilians (even as they fire rockets at Israel) because they craftily choose to dress as such?

Who would ever have imagined that such Big Lies would be championed by western intellectuals, academics, journalists, students – not a few of them Jews and even Israelis?

Orwell would laugh. Or cry…Continue reading on The Jewish Press >>

The Islamic Version of Orwell’s 1984 Is Upon Us.

How can we keep repeating ourselves without losing heart? What more is there to say? Telling the truth does not seem to work. The Big Lies, as well as the foul deeds, keep on happening. Expose one lie: A hundred more rise up in its place. Kill 100 Taliban and a hundred more take their places. We, who are still safely behind enemy lines, absolutely must keep documenting the hate speech and the terrorist atrocities; it is a profound form of resistance. One can tell that it is a form of warfare by the considerable toll it takes upon one’s body and soul.

How many times can one document the rise of the new anti-Semitism and the demonization of Israel? I have been doing so since 2001, both in a book (The New Anti-Semitism) and in hundreds, maybe thousands of articles, lectures, interviews. There are now hundreds of us who are also doing this heavy lifting: pundits, bloggers, distinguished authors, grassroots activists, retired folk. Some voices are outraged, many are maddeningly reasonable and consummately accurate. Still, the blood libels keep coming at us, without respite…Continue reading on Chesler Chronicles >>